The Art of Forgetting
Actors Claire Benedict and David Neilson read literary musings on forgetting and forgetfulness. With prose and poetry from Ogden Nash, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Philip K Dick.
As part of Radio 3's Why Music? The Key to Memory weekend in collaboration with the Wellcome Collection this week's Words and Music is called "The Art of Forgetting", Actors Claire Benedict (The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency) and David Neilson (Coronation Street) read literary musings on forgetting and forgetfulness. With prose and poetry from Ogden Nash, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Philip K Dick, Milan Kundera and others. Music includes Debussy, Purcell, Philip Glass, Villa-Lobos and Jacques Brel. The programme starts with humour and gravitates to more serious matters, exploring what an essential human quality it is to forget. The Art of Forgetting embraces the story of "S", the Russian mnemonist whose memory demonstrated no distinct limits, a lost soul who was simply unable to forget.
Last on
![]()
Why Music? The Key to Memory
Wellcome Collection hosts a weekend of fascinating programmes on music and the mind.
Music Played
Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes
-
Beau Hunks
Laurel and Hardy clip
![]()
00:00Ukie Sherin/ Jay Milton
Don聮t Forget About Tonight Tomorrow
Performer: Frank Sinatra.- METEOR CDMTBS001.
EE Cummings
Love is More Thicker Than Forget read by Claire Benedict.
![]()
00:00Claude Debussy
Jardins Sous La Pluie (Estampes)
Performer: Jean鈥怋ernard Pommier.- VIRGIN VBD5614212.
- 12.
Emily Dickinson
Heart We Will Forget Him read by Claire Benedict.
![]()
00:00Mica Levi
Love
- MILAN 3995432.
Philip K Dick
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale read by David Neilson
![]()
00:00David Bowie
Art Decade
Performer: David Bowie/ Brian Eno.- EMI.
- 9.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love in the Time of Cholera read by Claire Benedict
![]()
00:00Heitor Villa鈥怢obos
Prelude No.1
Performer: Segovia.- DG 4716872.
- 15.
![]()
00:05Philip Glass
Knee Play 1 (Einstein on the Beach)
Performer: Philip Glass Ensemble.- CBS M4K38875 CD1 T.1.
- 1.
Alexander Luria
The Mind of a Mnemonist read by David Neilson
![]()
00:00Philip Glass
Knee Play (Einstein on the Beach)
Performer: Philip Glass Ensemble.- CBS M4K38875.
- CD2 t.4.
Sarah Teasdale
Let it Be Forgotten read by Claire Benedict
![]()
00:00Debussy arr. Tomita
De Pas Sur La Neige
Performer: Tomita.- RCA.
- RD 84587.
Robert Frost
A Patch of Old Snow read by Claire Benedict
Ogden Nash
Please Remind Me Before I Forget read by David Nielson
![]()
00:00Jacques Brel
On n聮Oublie Rien
Performer: Jacques Brel.- Polydor.
- 22.
Milan Kundera
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
![]()
00:01Leos Jan谩膷ek
Unspeakable Anguish (On an Overgrown Path)
Performer: Marc-Andre Hamelin, piano.- Hyperion CDA68030.
- 8.
Dylan Thomas
Under Milk Wood, read by Claire Benedict and David Neilson
![]()
00:00Purcell
Dido聮s Lament (Dido and Aeneas
Performer: Simone Kermes, soprano; Musica Aeterna; Teodor Currentzis, conductor.- Alpha 376.
Producer's Note
As you may have been hearing in our weekend of programmes from Wellcome Collection, our enhanced capacity for memory is possibly the defining facet of humanity.听 It鈥檚 also a subject so key to the experience of music, the theatre of memory. 听The counterpart of remembering, of course, is forgetting, a concept which repeatedly appears as a device in drama and literature .
In the poet ee cummings鈥檚 hands, love is 鈥渕ore thicker than forget.鈥� Forgetting in this case stands opposed to everything that holds people together in our world. The multi-faceted varieties of love are permanent, cannot be erased. Debussy鈥檚 painterly piano music seems a ready foil to cummings鈥檚 wonderful modernist cum impressionist style. The West Yorkshire-based actress Claire Benedict delivers this sometimes elliptical poem with apparent ease and tremendous power.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez鈥檚 masterpiece Love in the Time of Cholera portrays two lovers reunited following a lifetime spent apart in secret, unforgetting devotion. After half a century of unexpressed feeling, the sustaining abscess bursts.
Blade Runner creator Philip K Dick鈥檚 鈥淲e Can Remember It For You Wholesale鈥� explores a futuristic world of commercially implanted recreational memories, more durable than real, easily forgotten ones. You too can adventure in Mars as a secret agent. You can have it all. It鈥檚 a thought-provoking excerpt and concept. A 1970s instrumental by 鈥淪tarman鈥� David Bowie seemed 听to capture the spirit of Dick鈥檚 short story. 听听
There鈥檚 an oddity in this collection too. Non-fiction creeps in by the back door with an account by Alexander Luria, the late Russian psychologist. 听But this is non-fiction bearing all the hallmarks of fiction. 听Asked in the 1920s by a baffled newspaper editor to test the memory of one of his reporters, Luria repeatedly tried and failed to trace its limits. 听The immense power of the troubled young man鈥檚 memory defied all attempts to measure it. The problem which dominated his life was that he could not forget anything. Philip Glass鈥檚 music from Einstein On The Beach conveys the beauty and the tragedy of the mnemonist鈥檚 plight.
There鈥檚 levity in this collection too. We open with Laurel and Hardy for, well, just for a laugh really, and I鈥檝e resurrected a piece the New Yorker commissioned from the satirist Ogden Nash to celebrate the (then) recent scientific discovery of the hippocampus as the neurological seat of the human memory. David Neilson reads this densely witty and rhythmic piece brilliantly. Many thanks to the New Yorker for sending me and allowing me to use the original after I鈥檇 only seen a digitally blurred version online.
As with many facets of human life, Milan Kundera sorts things out for us, pursuing memory to the cosmic building blocks of our experience. His character Tamina struggles to remember more than two out of nine Christmases spent with her beloved, and now late, husband. She does not want to rediscover the poetic nostalgia of their life together, just the facts. Only facts, plucked from the huge, chaotic canvas of life can enable and make sense of her path along the moment-by-moment of existence.
I鈥檝e ended with a whopper: sex and death rolled into one. The devastating and faintly comical exchange between Captain Cat and Rosie Probert is one of the most haunting I know, charting an uncertain course between life, death, memory and truth. Captain Cat remembers his erotic life with now dead Rosie as she (or his memory of her) lets go of life, the earth already filling her mouth. 鈥淩emember me, I am forgetting you.鈥�, bemoans dead Rosie.听 The best musical answer I could find to this was 鈥淲hen I am laid鈥� from Purcell鈥檚 Dido and Aeneas. 鈥淩emember me鈥�, laments Dido, 鈥渁h, but forget my fate.鈥�
Paul Frankl, Producer.
听
Broadcasts
- Sun 15 Oct 2017 17:30大象传媒 Radio 3
- Sun 13 May 2018 17:30大象传媒 Radio 3
The hidden history of plant-based diets
![The hidden history of plant-based diets]()
Forget social media influencers - the meat-free movement started with the Victorians.
Books website
Get closer to books with in-depth articles, quizzes and our picks from radio & TV.
Gallery
Related Content
